manna?

Seeking Prayer

Posted by Mike Boyink

Hey All -

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve told many of you about our big plans for ‘10.  If we missed you - the short version is that sometime around September we plan to hand over our housekeys to someone, climb into an RV of some sort, and spend a year traveling the country.  If you want the longer version you can read it over on my blog.  We’ve also started a blog specifically for the trip - that can be found at http://boyinks4adventure.com.

We don’t have it all figured out yet - there are just a ton of decisions to be made.  Giving ourselves time to both make those decisions and save enough money to finance the trip are reasons we set the departure date out that far.

We’d appreciate your prayers for us as we prepare - and here are some specifics you can pray for…

These seem to group themselves around people, money, and stuff:

People

• Pray we find the right person or people to live in our house while we are gone. We’re not sure if these people will be renting or house-sitting yet - but pray the our house can answer someone’s need for shelter and security.
• Pray for the people we’ll encounter on our travels.  We’re not feeling called to consider our trip primarily a “mission trip” - but will be looking for opportunities to serve and be “winsome subversives” while on the road.
• Pray for Harrison and Miranda.  They’ll be 13 and 12 when we leave - so we’re uprooting them during some years that can be pivotal to who they become as adults.  Pray that this trip is a benefit to that growth process.  Pray that their worldview is enlarged - and their appreciation for who God is, what He’s done, and how He is still and ever present in the world. Pray that this trip has a lasting impression on them - and proves worth what they need to give up for it.
• Pray for Crissa and I. As we try to coordinate this trip the odd thing is that we don’t know who we’ll be in a year.  Will we be a family coming back off the road from a fun year, ready to settle back into a stick house and pick up where we left off?  Or will we be anxious to sell the stick house and call this our new way of living?
• Pray that we’ll have the grace, mercy, and faith to endure, handle and enjoy whatever occurs to us on this trip - no matter if it’s something straight from a tour book or something seemingly catastrophic.

Money

• Pray that God will provide the finances we’ll need to do this.
• Pray that we’ll be better at tithing and generosity in giving even in the face of increased financial needs.
• Pray that we’ll find new sources of income while on the road to replace income we’ll lose out on by not being here.

Stuff

• Pray that we will find cheap or free storage for the things we’ll need to leave behind but don’t want to sell.
• Pray that God will lead us to an RV & companion vehicle that fits our needs and our budget.
• Pray that we can maintain our sanity while negotiating our way through the decision process of what to purge, what to sell, what to keep, and what to purchase.

Thanks everyone.